


The Haven

by PurposefulChaos



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:27:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22031014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PurposefulChaos/pseuds/PurposefulChaos
Summary: Rey is in agony. Her soulmate is gone, his life force given to her, and her heart is left fractured and bleeding... but there is still hope. General Leia Organa appears to her on Exegol, telling her of one more venture she must undertake to bring balance to the Force—and balance within herself. For truly, a half can never be a whole.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8





	The Haven

“Kylo Ren is dead.”  
That was what she told them. That was what she told all of them. Kylo Ren was dead; he died on Exegol, with a heart free of darkness and eyes filled with light. The world around them was ripe with evil, festering and all-consuming, yet he had prevailed. It had been for her, she knew, but she spoke little of that. They could never hope to understand the depth of their bond, the love they had shared in those preciously fleeting moments following the downfall of the Sith. All that mattered to the universe was that Kylo Ren was dead, and life would fall into some semblance of peace.  
But she knew something they did not, a secret she had kept from the entire universe. Restoring her life on Exegol came at the cost of Ben Solo’s, but that was not his destiny. Their souls were intertwined, fated for each other, woven by the Force into a bond that could never be broken. No power, not even death, could ever hope to come between them.  
Yet the anguish she had felt when Ben Solo vanished before her eyes, his kiss still fresh her lips, was torturous. It was like a lance had been driven through her heart, fracturing her soul and leaving a husk of her crumpled on the stone, weeping into the sweater he had left behind. She detested the hole piercing its midsection, the hole she had created just hours earlier. To think she could have killed him, wanted to kill him... she had hardly even noticed the searing pain in her own abdomen, as if she had stabbed herself along with him.  
That, she realized, was the Dark Side. Bloodlust, rage, hatred, and pain. She had nearly given in to it just as he had set himself free.  
“Be with me.” The words trembled from her lips as she pressed her forehead into the fabric. “Be with me. Be with me.”  
She did not react to the hand on her shoulder. It was not his. Too small, too light. It was not until a blue glow appeared overhead that she even bothered to look upwards.  
“Rey.”  
The Force ghost of Leia Organa stood before her, clothed in white. Her expression was that of pride and sorrow.  
Still, Rey could not acknowledge her. She had sensed her death, mourned it, but her mind was already filled with enough grief. She returned her gaze to Ben Solo’s sweater, fearing that should she look away, it, too, would disappear.  
“Rey,” Leia repeated, her voice as gentle as she remembered.  
“Is he with you?”  
Rey’s voice was ragged and cracked and filled with tears. With enormous reluctance, she looked back to Leia, her eyes welled and red. “Can you see him?”  
The General smiled at her. “I can.”  
Rey began to tremor, her body as well as her soul unable to process the thought of seeing her soulmate as a ghost. Once again, she turned her gaze back to his sweater, only for Leia to kneel down before her.  
“It was not Snoke that created your bond,” she said, placing a hand on her cheek. “It was the Force. It bound you together long ago, for it knew that the only way to bring balance was to unite both Light and Dark. That balance between you will remain, Rey. It always will. But you must be the one to restore it.”  
Brow furrowed, Rey met her eyes. “What more must I do?”

That answer was on Tattooine.

Rey’s friends in the Resistance didn’t understand her eagerness to venture there, nor did they understand the fierceness of her hugs and why their farewells brought her to tears. Rey had hardly rejoined them for a day before she returned to Luke Skywalker’s X-Wing, alone once more as she crossed the stars to the Tatoo system. The Resistance believed she would return in several days’ time. Rey was not certain she would return at all.  
Perhaps it was her destiny to be alone.  
The twin suns had begun to dip into the horizon as Rey took her first steps on the golden sands of Tatooine, taking in the sight before her. It was the childhood home of Luke Skywalker, but it now appeared to have been taken over by the elements. As she approached it, she noted that sand had covered most of its subterranean housing, leaving only the hut untouched. Tentatively, Rey reached out and brushed her fingertips along its doorframe, and visions of the past flashed before her. Love, life, tragedy, death. The young boy who would grow to become Darth Vader, and the son that would rise up against him. Star-crossed lovers and smoldering ruin. The Dark side of the Force, and the Light to meet it.  
But there was a feeling there, like nothing she had ever sensed before. Just as she had seen the Dark at Ahch-To, so now she saw the Light; vast, beautiful, brightening with every moment she spent near it. Even the sadness there was given purpose.  
Breathing deeply, Rey drew back her hand and knelt before the entryway, facing the red and yellow suns that dipped ever lower. If a part of her had not died on Exegol, she might have found beauty in them. Now there was only the light they shed, and the task at hand.  
”Go back to the beginning, Rey. Go back to the Light.”  
Leia’s voice echoed in her mind as she drew something from her satchel; a lightsaber, one that had been passed down through two generations of Skywalkers before being left to her. She held it in both of her hands, running her thumb along its silver hilt, before closing her eyes.  
“We finished what you began,” she said. “We brought balance to the Force like the ones that came before us, and I leave this here so that balance might one day be brought again. My destiny has been fulfilled.”  
”Not yet.”  
The voice of Luke Skywalker echoed all around her, furling with the wind that ruffled her unbound hair. Rey opened her eyes, but Luke was not there. Her eyes were left to take in another standing before her, centered between the twin suns and clothed in tan and white. His dark hair was bathed in the gold of the evening, and on his face was a smile… a smile she had seen only once before and feared she would never see again.  
The lightsaber fell from her hands.  
All at once, the grey within her heart became light. What sorrow she had born from loss exploded into joy, and the pieces of her soul reformed with a single word, a name she softly spoke as tears began to blind her.  
“Ben.”  
His arms were around her first, then hers around him. They sobbed openly as the link between the two of them swelled to life once more, rejuvenated by the presence of the haven of Light. Her hands drifted to his shoulders, his neck, his face, stroking the hollow of his cheek like she had done before she lost him on Exegol. His eyes, full of warmth and tears, gazed at her in whole adoration.  
“The Force is strong in my family,” Ben said, his voice choked with emotion.  
He tipped his forehead against her own, and Rey smiled as she whispered, “And it has brought mine back to me at last.”

**Author's Note:**

> Note: this work implies that there is a Light side haven in Luke Skywalker’s home on Tatooine, due to it having powerful force energy associated with it. This is not canon and is something I thought up while writing this. The way I would explain this story is that, by having connected physically to both Light and Dark havens, Rey is able to achieve inner balance, and the Force restores the bond of the dyad due in part by unseen efforts by Leia and Luke. Is it cheesy? Maybe. Does it make sense? Debatable. But it sure as heck is better than what we got!!


End file.
